My feet didn’t want to move, but Carson pulled me forward through the doorway. Without letting go of my arm, he reached out. A click, and the giant bulb that dangled overhead sparked into life, exposing smeared and dingy walls. Green spots danced in my vision and I had to blink a few times to clear it.
At first, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. A pile of rags. A scarecrow crouched in a far corner. Heavy chains looped through iron wall rings and ran down to manacles that wrapped around stick-thin wrists and ankles.
“What is this?” I whispered.
The huddled creature raised its head. A pair of red-rimmed eyes met mine. And it felt like every particle of the room’s foul air flooded into my lungs all at once.
The last time I’d seen him he’d been dressed in chain mail and tunic, not some torn and filthy smock. The white-blond hair was long now, tangled and greasy, except for two oddly shaved areas on either temple. His face had aged tremendously, but there was no mistaking the man’s identity.
A line of drool stretched from one corner of his shrunken mouth, leaving a dark circle on a food-encrusted smock.
“No.” I tried to back up, but the doctor blocked me. “Impossible. He’s . . . He’s . . .”
“You know this man?” The doctor grunted in genuine surprise. “How fascinating. I’d no idea. I only wanted the two of you to meet, as I believe Patient Smith has much in common with you and I.
“The man was already a patient at Bellevue when I arrived here nigh on thirty years ago. The physician over his case had given up on treatment. I convinced him to let me take over Smith’s care, and when I built this hospital, I brought him with me. But how could you possibly know—”
I could no longer hear Carson. The room had begun to spin in a swirl of white on white, until all I could focus on was the revenant of the human being I’d met only months before.
Chains clinked as the now-old man raised his arm, pointed a long, yellowed nail directly at me. “Wiiiitch.”
I flinched as the gravelly sound of his voice skittered across my skin like a thousand roaches.
Eustace Clarkson.
Lackey. Brute. Would-be rapist. Guard of the London City Watch, in the year of our Lord, 1154.
It wasn’t as if I’d had a choice. He’d already knocked Bran unconscious, and would have killed us both. But not before he’d done much, much worse to me.
The entrance to the chasm had been right there and the man had been strong, yes. But also stupid.
I learned then that killing someone is surprisingly easy when you have no other option. I shoved. He fell. And Eustace Clarkson had disappeared into the Dim, where no final thud ended his horrible screams.
I still hear him sometimes when I wake in the night.
“It’s impossible,” I whispered. “He’s dead. I saw him fall. I—”
Eustace lunged at me. Broken, blackened teeth bared, fingers curled into claws. Rage and madness and fury. I leapt back, slammed into the wall. The chains arrested his advance, jerking him backwards like a rabid dog.
He slammed to his knees, muttering to himself as he signed the cross over and over. “Demons. Demons. Demons everywhere. Lightning in my head. Witch girl in my room. Kill her. Kill the lightning man.”
Carson cast a hand out at the pitiful scrap that once had been Eustace Clarkson. “A year or two before I arrived, the police found him in an alley in Five Points, beaten near to death. The constables brought him to Bellevue, where he claimed to be a knight brought back from Hades.” The doctor swallowed. “Having made that particular journey myself, I must say I understood the sentiment.”
I was suddenly exhausted. Too bone-tired to pretend anymore as I watched Eustace lunge against his chains again and again, each time growing weaker as he rasped, “Kill the demon witch. Kill the lightning man. Kill them. Kill them all.”
“He’s from London,” I said. “Twelfth century. But he was no knight.”
Carson shook his head. “Incredible. As you can see, the man is no conversationalist, and I admit there’ve been times I’ve longed to speak to someone who truly understands my circumstance. I only wish you and I had more time to chat of that world we left behind. Unfortunately, I’ve had to make other arrangements for you.” He sighed. “A shame, really.”
“Arrangements?” I asked, my gaze straying to the shaved—and now that I looked closer—scorched areas on Eustace’s temples.
He’d called Carson “lightning man.”
“I must, of course, be wary of drawing too much attention too quickly. You’ve no idea how difficult it’s been to wait decades on appropriate modernization. Patient Smith was the only one I dared experiment on. But brain surgery has been in practice in some form or another since the ancient Egyptians. It was not too huge a leap for me to introduce its utilization in psychiatric medicine.”
And the old shall be made new again.
Carson withdrew a small leather notebook. Scribbling, he asked, “What year, exactly, did you come from? I—for instance—am originally from 1983.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” He looked at me curiously. “How did you come to cross over?”
“Probably the same way you did.”
Carson laughed. “I do hope it didn’t cost you as much as it did me.”
“How much did you pay the Timeslippers? That’s what happened, right? They hid you so you wouldn’t go to jail.”
For an instant, the doctor looked impressed, and then he raised one lazy shoulder. “I’d seen the writing on the wall. I knew I would likely go to prison for a long time. I could have fled the country, of course. But where to? And simply leaving would likely mean I could never again practice medicine. I must admit, I despaired.”
When I snorted, he flashed me a warning frown. “Can you even begin to imagine my joy at learning there was another way? A place where I would never be found and . . .” He lifted a finger. “Could continue my practice, my experiments, with little or no restriction? No nosy review boards to censure what could have been groundbreaking work in the world of psychosurgery. No litigious family members. No federal investigations.” Carson’s bitter tone softened as he cocked his head to look at me. “Here, my dear girl, I may do as I please.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” I said. “Which makes you a sick—”
Carson slapped me. A backhanded blow that sent me stumbling across the room. Blood welled from a cut inside my cheek as I crashed to my knees, and Eustace Clarkson made his move.
He snatched me by the hair and dragged me toward him. My heels scrabbled against the filthy floor as Carson shrieked for the guards.
Eustace was old and weak, but I was still no match against the cumulative decades of rage and hate. He drove me to the floor. Hands closed around my neck, squeezing . . . squeezing.
Witch Demon. Witch Demon.
Dupree and Malloy burst into the room, clubs already raised. Blows rained down on Eustace’s shoulders and back, but he wouldn’t stop. As I clawed and kicked, the doctor appeared, rolling some kind of massive device.
“Hold him,” he told the guards. “Hold him now!”
With his hands still choking the life from me, a guard took Eustace in a headlock. A gray film had begun to bleed over my vision. But I saw the doctor slap something that resembled oversize headphones over Eustace’s head and secure the strap beneath his chin.
Eustace’s grip on me loosened as he screamed and tried to rip off the ersatz helmet. I sucked in wisps of air while more guards rushed in. One grabbed my hands and hauled me out from beneath the foaming madman.
At least six guards held Eustace Clarkson while Dr. Carson fiddled with the dials on the now-attached machine.
“Ready!” Carson shouted. “On my signal, let go and do not touch him, understood?”
A hum of electricity. Eustace howling. Blood pounded in my ears as I tried to get my bruised throat to function.
“Now!” Carson yelled. “Clear!”
The guards fell away, le
aving Eustace on his knees alone. The doctor flipped a switch, sending volts of electricity crackling through his emaciated form. The room filled with the stench of singed hair and charred flesh. Eustace quivered and juddered, his body now little more than a mass of cooking meat.
The guards, entranced by the sight, had forgotten my existence. One of them, in his haste to let go before the electricity zapped him, had fallen to his side only inches away from me. An iron key ring hung half in and half out of his pocket.
Normally I calculated the odds and evaluated all possible scenarios.
Screw that. That sadistic bastard isn’t going to touch me ever, ever again. Hell. No. I’m getting out of this Victorian loony bin. Tonight.
While smoke drifted from the top of Eustace’s head, I reached out, snatched the guard’s key ring, and slipped it into my bodice.
Chapter 31
I HAD NO IDEA WHAT TIME IT WAS. BUT MY STOMACH wouldn’t stop rumbling, which meant lunch and dinner had likely passed. They hadn’t brought food. But then they wouldn’t, would they?
NPO, nil per os, the Latin term for withholding food and fluids. Well, of course. Nothing to eat or drink twelve hours prior to surgery. Don’t want anyone vomiting on the surgeon, now do we?
Carson himself had marched me back to my room. Furious, he’d flung me inside.
“Do you know,” he said, his mouth curled into a cruel sneer, “I actually considered postponement. I thought perhaps it might be interesting to speak with a fellow traveler. But you are a disruption, Miss Walton.” He smoothed a hand over his hair. “In the morning, I shall unveil the world’s first transorbital lobotomy. It will astonish the medical community and secure my spot as the leading psychiatrist of the age. And you . . . you will have the distinct honor of being its first recipient. Good evening, Miss Walton.”
After he left, I paced the perimeter of my cell for what felt like a dozen lifetimes. Periodically, I’d hear the clip-clop of footsteps, and would press my ear to the door, certain it was the hapless guard come to search for his missing key ring. But either he hadn’t noticed its absence, or was afraid of admitting he’d lost it, because each time, the footsteps passed me by. Once, my heart all but stopped when the clang of a gurney approached, and I thought I’d left it too late, that they’d come for me before I could make my escape.
The claustrophobia still rushed in like a vicious dog to nip at my sanity. Several times throughout that long, long night, I had to lie flat on the floor, forehead pressed against the dingy, splintered wood to fight off crescendoing waves of panic. When everything had fallen into an ominous silence, the voice inside told me it was time. That if I had any expectation of getting out of here with my brain intact, I had to go. Now.
Just get on with it, Walton. If you’re gonna do this thing, then freaking do it already.
I drew the key ring from my bodice, but my hands shook so badly, I couldn’t even fit the right key into the lock. I paused, ignoring the walls that I swore were closing in again, and began to count my breaths like Mom had taught me so long ago.
In . . . two, three. Out . . . two, three.
Insert. Turn. Click.
To my surprise and great (silent) whoops of relief, the door snicked open. I peeked out into the darkened, empty hallway, pulse throbbing so hard I could feel it behind my eyeballs.
The boy is in the East Wing, Peters had whispered to me just before Carson had finished with Annabelle and had both of us dragged away. Room 14 in Men’s Ward D. There’s a laundry chute at the north end of the hallway. I’ll send you both down that way, then come around and unlock the laundry door. Your people will be waiting outside. That’s your way out.
With no idea which way I should go, I turned and headed for an open doorway at the far end of the left corridor. There, a darkened set of steps led up. A stair creaked so loudly beneath my weight that it echoed off the walls. Sure that the sound had alerted every freaking guard in the place, I plastered myself against the wall and waited for my inevitable capture.
It took a while to convince my body to unclench. I’d been in tight spots—literally—in London. But I’d always had someone with me. Collum and Phoebe. Rachel and William.
Bran.
This time, no one could help me. Peters had done as much as he could and had paid a heavy price. If I failed, I would do it alone, and the consequences for me, for Doug, for my entire family would be catastrophic.
I prayed under my breath as I climbed the rest of the way up. At the top, I pressed my ear against the door. Hearing nothing, I tried the crystal knob. Unlocked.
The next corridor was stuffy and windowless, housing a series of closets and storerooms. At the last door on the right, I struck gold. The room was small, plain, with a flagstone floor. As I peered through the gloom, I saw a huge metallic bin seated against the left wall. It emitted the distinct aroma of dirty sheets and musty towels. A draft filtered in from the crack beneath a door on the far wall that I figured must lead up to the outside. Above the bin, one lone sheet draped from the lip of a laundry chute, like a ghost too tired to make the final leap.
The rest of my stealthy journey through Greenwood Institute consisted of a series of wrong turns, backtracking, and gut-churning close calls. By the time I reached the set of double doors labeled GREENWOOD MEN’S WARD D, I was wound so tight a mouse fart would have sent me right over the edge.
Deep within the confines of the mental asylum, a clock bonged the hour. One. Two. Three. Four.
Four a.m. Shift change. You got this, Walton.
From the floor below came a muffled wail that was soon taken up by others throughout the building. One after another, patients cried out in pain or loneliness.
Back home, before it all went to crap, Mom, Dad, and I would sometimes sit on the front porch to watch the fireflies gather. In the balmy, deep summer silence a train would pass, or a car alarm would go off, and it would begin.
It always started with one dog. Then the entire canine population of our small town would join in, filling the night with a chorus of creepy howls.
These were not dogs. They were human beings, whose combined pain oozed up the walls, bled across the floors, and dripped from the ceiling of what should have been a place of healing.
Men’s Ward D was still undecorated, the floor gritty with plaster dust. Wires protruded from unfinished walls and ceiling, awaiting electrical fixtures. The only light in the long corridor came from two oil lamps set on the floor at either end. The far lamp guttered, but I grinned as its light revealed the square outline of a laundry chute, just as Sergeant Peters had promised.
Bare soles skidding in the powdery dust, I approached room 14. My pulse jumped thirty beats at a movement that turned out to be dust bunnies scampering in a shadowed corner.
I swiped damp palms over the velvet day gown, and selected a key from the iron ring. As no alarm had yet been raised, I assumed the guard had decided not to reveal his carelessness. Not yet. But my luck wouldn’t last forever. We had to get out. Fast. Before the doctor’s surgical team arrived at my room and realized “patient zero” had decided against having her brain split in two.
Relief washed me head to toe as I keyed myself into room 14, and saw the big form huddled beneath a blanket.
Tiptoeing so as not to alarm him, I whispered, “Doug? Doug, are you awake? It’s me. Can you—?”
The shove caught me flat in the chest. I flew back and slammed hard into the wall. My vision flashed to white as the back of my head smacked into solid wood.
“Get the fuck away from me, you sick bastards!”
I crumpled to my knees. “Doug,” I managed to croak. “’S Hope.”
The floor vibrated when Doug thumped to his knees beside me.
“Oh, bloody damn,” he cried. “Hope! What are you doing here? Jesus, I’m sorry, lass. Are you a’right, then? I thought you were one of them. That nurse, she told me they were going to take me to . . . to surgery today.” Doug shuddered. “Jesus, I’m sorry. Did I hur
t you?”
Doug snatched his glasses from the small table and squinted through the smeary glass. “Shit. Oh, shit. You’re bleeding.” He plucked a wadded handkerchief from the dresser and pressed it to the back of my head.
“Ow.”
He flinched as I yelped. Spots of red dotted the white cloth. I gingerly touched the lump that was erupting on my scalp. But my head was clearing and there was no time to worry about it now anyway.
“I’m fine.” Doug’s image doubled, but fortunately the two worried faces quickly merged back into one. “Seriously. But what about you? Are you okay?”
He nodded, though I recognized the strain of fear and isolation. I knew it all too well. He reached for me and wrapped me in his muscular arms.
“Jesus,” he said as he hugged me tight. “I was terrified I’d never see any of you again. I tried to escape. Tried to kick the bloody door down. But the wankers kept drugging me.”
“Me too,” I told him. “Ass wipes.”
He pulled back and I grinned up at his dear, sweet face. “What now?” he asked.
“Now we get the hell out of here.”
Doug nodded and scrambled to his feet, giving me a hand up. Though the room wobbled, there wasn’t time to let it steady.
“What’s the plan?” he said.
I laid it out for him. “But it will all be for nothing if we don’t get out before daylight.”
“Then let’s roll, aye?”
My hands shook, and for a horrifying instant, the small key wouldn’t turn in the laundry chute lock. “Oh God. Oh no. No no no.”
“Let me try.”
I stepped aside, gladly. With a slight jiggle, the lock disengaged and the chute clicked open.
“Awesome,” I said. “Now go.”
We’d worked out that if, by unlucky chance, anyone happened to be in the laundry room when we emerged, Doug had a much better shot at kicking their ass.
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